Recognising that the old illustrations are still regarded with a halo of memory and romance, not unlike that which raises Mumbo Jumbo to a fetish among his worshippers, a wish to estimate anew the intrinsic value, considered as works of art, of these old illustrations, is not provoked by merely destructive tendencies. So long as Thackeray's drawing of _Amelia_ is accepted as a type of grace and beauty, how can the believer realise the beauty of Millais's _Was it not a lie?_ in _Framley Parsonage_. In the earlier and later engravings alike, the costume repels; but in the one there is real flesh and blood, real passion, real art, in the other a merely conventional symbol, which we agree to accept as an interesting heroine, in the way a child of five accepts the scratches on his slate as real pirates and savages. There is little use in trying to appreciate the best, if the distinctly second-best is reverenced equally; and so, at any cost of personal feeling, it is simply the duty of all concerned to rank the heroes of the sale-room, 'Phiz,' Cruikshank, and Leech at their intrinsic value. This is by no means despicable. For certain qualities which are not remotely connected with art belong to them; but the beauty of truth, the knowledge born of academic accomplishment, or literal imitation of nature, were alike absolutely beyond their sympathy. Hence to praise their work as one praises a Dürer, a Whistler, or a Millais, is apt to confuse the minds of the laity, already none too clear as to the moment when art comes in. This protest is not advanced to prove that every drawing mentioned in these pages surpasses the best work of the men in question, but merely to suggest whether it would not be better to recognise that the praise bestowed for so many years was awarded to a conventional treatment now obsolete, and should not be regarded as equivalent to that bestowed upon works of art which owe nothing to parochial conventions, and are based on unalterable facts, whether a Hokousaï or a Menzel chances to be the interpreter. The _Chandos Poets_ (Warne), a series of bulky octavos, with red-line borders, are of unequal merit. Some, _Willmott's Poets of the Nineteenth Century_, _James Montgomery's Poems_, _Christian Lyrics_, and _Heber's Poetical Works_, appear to be merely reprints of earlier volumes with the original illustrations; others have new illustrations by men of the sixties. The _Longfellow_ has several by A. Boyd Houghton, who is also represented by a few excellent designs in the _Byron_; _Legendary Ballads_ (J. S. Roberts) has three full-page designs, by Walter Crane, to _Thomas of Ercildoune_ (p. 357), _The Jolly Harper_ (p. 462), and _Robin Hood_ (p. 580). Later volumes, with designs by F. A. Fraser and H. French, do not come into our subject.